How to Start a Xamarin App from Scratch Webinar Q&A

On May 17, 2018, Syncfusion hosted the webinar, “How to Start a Xamarin App from Scratch,” presented by Aaron Melamed, Syncfusion’s product solutions specialist. Melamed showed attendees how to use Syncfusion’s navigation drawer and list view controls to set up a new Xamarin application. The following blog post is the Q&A portion of the webinar. The webinar recording can be found on our YouTube page, or you can watch it here.

Q: Could you please cover debugging issues with Xamarin.Forms? I regularly run into problems on Android and iOS. The only reliable build is UWP. Mostly, the problems are related to the linker. With PreserveAttribute, some issues are resolved, but not all. And even when the output project builds, it might not run or even install on a testing device. Do you have some debugging hints or best practice hints?

A: In Android, sometimes the existing application will be in cache even after uninstalling. Try uninstalling the cache from Apps under device settings, or renaming the package name under AndroidManifest.xml.

Q: I noticed that running your application using the Android emulator is quite fast. What kind of machine specs are you using for this demo? I am struggling together with my students: it takes forever to run and display something.

A: The demo was run on a Surface Book with an i7 and 16GB of RAM.

Q: One of my biggest challenges is creating a navigation command from a ViewModel. Do you have any advice?

A: Yes. We have a data source library. It is a non-UI component that consumes raw data and processes data operations such as sorting, filtering, and grouping, saving developers time and effort in building the functionality themselves.